College students will have to wait longer to find out how much financial aid they could receive because of new FAFSA forms. Ebony Holmes with LA Office of Student Financial Assistance says this could result in financial aid offers not being made until April. Holmes admits it’s not ideal.
“Number one, how much do I have to pay out of pocket? And number two if they’re trying to decide between a few schools you know which one makes sense for me financially.”
The form is usually released in October, but the updated form wasn’t released until December 30. The form was updated a second time this month to include inflation data.
Holmes says this will shorten the period between knowing the amount of financial assistance and what college they can afford. But there are resources for students to help to try to determine their aid.
“NCAN (National College Attainment Network) has these Pell tables that they can use factors like family income, family size that they can see where they fall on that spectrum of “Am I going to get full Pell or some Pell amount?”, so that may help.”
The new FAFSA is a product of the FAFSA Simplification Act passed in 2022 to streamline the financial aid application and expand access to federal Pell Grants.
Holmes says the rollout has been bumpy, but the plus side.
“Because of those adjustments there’s going to be an increase of $1.8 billion that those students are going to be eligible for in funding.”
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